Finding Claire

by Kim Merrill

After the sudden death of her adoptive mother, a rich New York City dancer embarks on a search for her birth mother s home. She longs for a family connection but ends up with a family crisis. In an impoverished farmhouse in rural upstate New York, her fifteen-year-old half-sister is pregnant and wants to give up her baby. Her mother a stubborn, introverted woman who carves rough rock sculptures as a way to express her frustrations wants her to keep it. Her grandmother wants to be boss. Armed with good intentions and a desire to help her new family, the dancer arrives at their door. When she s met with a volatile mixture of envy, regret and resentment, her assumptions about identity, biological ties and what it "means" to be a mother are turned upside down.

47 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005